Vesperillo T. Bat
Vesperillo Tinybat, (nee Sparksprocket) is a Death Knight who is unhealthily fascinated with the creation of what she refers to as "Biomechs" as well as peach tea. Appearance Vesperillo is very definitely a dead Death Knight. Her pale skin has lost much of its elasticity, shadows haunt it’s lines, and her piercing blue orbs are flat and emotionless. Never the less, her black painted lips are frequently pursed in curiosity or spread into a smile. The later makes people nervous, as she has a set of false teeth crafted from thorium, with the canines wicked extended. Her greying black hair is cheerfully pulled back into a pair of enormous piggy tails. Thisalso keeps the bangs out of her solitary tatto, what is apparently a bat with clockwork powerd wings spreading across her brows. Scars, burns, nicks and corpse ichor cover her arms. Her heavy saronite warplate is adorned with cogwheels, and several “normal” tools are poked in to her hair. She is rarely seen without “frostybot” an undead Frostwyrm hatchling that she has been “improving” through the addition of high Gnomish technology. Personality Vesperillo seems remarkably like a normal Gnome at first encounter. Usually cheerful, eternally curious, and frequently singing while tinkering with her creations. But this initial appearance is somewhat belied by the fact that the songs are about zombies, peach tea and bats, the creations are usually some hideous combination of mechanical and re-animated corpse. The curiosity about how much force might be needed to split a skull with her rune axe however is spot on with typical Gnomish behaviour. She is thoroughly addicted to peach tea, and is never found without several large flasks of this beverage on hand. While delighted to build her “biomechs” using undead of all species, she is particularly obsessed with bats, the smaller the better. Unfortunately the only biomech to survive the mechanising process is Frostybot, her undead Frostwyrm. Unlike many of those reborn as immortal Death Knights, she does not harbour a particular resentment towards the Scourge or the forces of the Lich King, but is instead actually secretly grateful for the second chance at life. Of course that’s not a LOT of gratitude, she feels much more towards Darion Mograine, who was willing to let her go her own course once her memories were regained. History Peach tea and robots Born into the extended Sparksprocket family, Vesperillo was given her first tinker set before she could walk. She grew up into a reliable, but unimaginative gnomish engineer, and was immediately partnered with her near cousin, Grazzle, a remarkably brilliant, but extremely erratic engineer. Between the two of them, they created several significant improvements to Gnomergran’s sanitation systems. As well as developing a system designed to quickly brew tea leaves, infuse the resulting beverage with a gentle fruit flavour, and then reduce it in temperature to near freezing point. While Grazzle preferred her tea plantanin flavoured, Vesperillo was more of a fan of infusing hers with peaches harvested from the farms of Loreadon. Because of their expertise, Grazzle and Vesperillo were sent to assist with a public works program in the human city of stratholme Peach tea and what the hell is wrong with that crate? Ahh Stratholme. Jewel of the north. Home of the Knights of the Silver Hand. Interface between the other races, and the mysterious High Elves. And in close proximity to the largest number of peach orchards known to Gnomekind. The place was exciting no doubt, and Vesp was delighted to be there. The city’s sewer system, however, was something of a discrace, somewhat human, somewhat Dwarvish, and more than anything else “dump it in the moat and hope” There was only a tiny Gnome population in town, but Vesp and Graz were happy to be there, with one hell of a challenge ahead of them. They had been quite worried when communications with Gnomeregan had been cut off not long before they crossed into the Arathi Highlands but were reassured by one of their fellow engineers that when the northern lights were shining like that, radio signals would not bounce of the ionosphere, whatever an ionosphere was, and the mountains were in the way of a direct line of sight. Grazz began to brainstorm a solution for the mismatched disaster that was the sewer system, while Vesperillo began introducing the citizens of Stratholme to the joy of Iced Peach Tea. The tea was so much better with the fresh fruit available in Stratholme as opposed to the dried fruit you got in Gnomeregan. Peach tea and Brains There were some rumours through the city, the possibility of a dire plague sweeping through the country side. People were getting ill. But Vesperillo didn’t care. She’d had an innovation spring fully fledged into her mind, a (practically) cheap and (very nearly) safe way to transport fresh fruit from Loreadon to Gnomergran. She had sent a courier to one of the larger orchardeers in the area, and his response was one of genuine interest! So even as refugees were pouring into the city, she was preparing her Mechanostrider for a trip out into the country. She had noting much, just a bedroll, a few flagons of tea, and her most essential tools. Waving a fond farewell to Grazzle, who was to busy trying to get a Mod V reverse flow sewer valve to couple with a Dwarvish pipe to be paying attention, she set out to meet with the man she hoped would finance her invention and make them both rich. If only Vesp had been out of the city. If only she’d believed the rumours. If only she’d paied even the slightest attention to the fact that the farm was completely dead still, no smoke rising from the chimney, no dogs barking, nothing. But she was a city gal at heart and experience, and so the plagued ghoul that responded to her knocking on the farmstead door too her totally by surprise and scored a vicious scratch upon her. She tried to run for her mechano strider, only to see it being brought down by plagued hounds. Desperately she dived into the farm’s barn. Even the pigs were plagued, diseased monstrosities! With a speed lent by fear, she scrabbled her way up a ladder and into the hay loft. Peach tea and bats At last! The bats were not plagued, not plagued at all. She pulled up the ladder to prevent the zombies following her and began to think really hard about how to use a bat to send a message for help. She gently zapped a bat with an overcharged capacitor, stunning it without permanently injuring it, then began to construct. A homing device. Structural reinforcements. Mechanobio feedback systems. All to be intergrated onto the bat and sent to her partner. It was warm, too warm in the hayloft. She began to sweat profusely She was less than halfway done when she finally collapsed, the plague infected scratch spreading the infection throughout her body. No Peach tea and Golems She was dead. So delightful. The afterlife was a joyous place, where projects could run over budget to one’s heart’s content, explosives were always available, and there were more cogwheels than one could conveniently count with a Gamma five Cogwheel cobnumbulator. Grazzle was there too. Neither of them were to worried about the circumstances of their deaths. This was heaven. No wait what? These were... fantasy? And she was? What was she. She stared up into the face of an unfeeling, unemotional human wrapped in plate armour. And past him to a huge, towering creation of blubber and metal. She blinked once, then twice. An idea formed. “Connect a thorium widget to chain tabbe a, run a fuzed copper wiring along its length and connect this.” She brandished the capacitor she had been holding when she had died. Instructor RaZuvious blinked in confusion at the recently reanimated gnome. He commanded one of the nearby necromancers to follow that instruction, and was delighted when the resulting shock sent the hapless cultist flying right of the side of Archerus. Vesp stared. And felt herself giggling. It was her lungs doing it, but not her will. “A real live wire, ain't ya?” asked the instructor. "Your new lord wants a word." He pointed to the towering ebon armoured figure, looking up at the night sky. No Peach tea and Scarlet Crusaders Vesp went up to the armoured figure, whose boot tops she bairly reached. “My lord?” she enquired. “Can you do that again?” the booming voice of the litch king asked, pointing at the red smear on the rocks, and the ghoul struggling away from it on shattered bones. She concentrated. A pile of bones nearby shuddered at her merest thoughts of resurrection. She pulled the now very rusty spanner from her hair and then stopped. It was gone. All the skill. All her memories. The monster in front of her was just a ghoul, not a canvas to be recreated into something grander. Disappointment at failing her master filled her, and she bowed her head in shame. She was dismissed. Adequate as a Death Knight, she mechanically fulfilled her orders in destroying Havenshire, without showing any undue initiative or any hint of emotion. Unlike the other Knights of the Ebon Blade, she did not feel any particular surge of vengeance after the battle at Light's Hope. Her old life was still beyond her. She was still numb. She went to Stormwind because it was orders, not because she wanted too. Peach tea and memories. It was when she was walking through the streets of Stormwind that it happened. She’d gotten lost trying to find the king and wondered into the dwarven district. A fellow Gnome saw her, and hurled the first thing to hand at the foul Scourge, a pitcher of peach tea. It shattered on her helmet, the liquid spraying inside. One drop was all it took. A single drop of the herb and peach flavoured infusion splashed on her tongue. Herself came rushing back. She removed her helmet, shaking out her dampened hair and reached for her spanner. No she had to get the message to the king first. Peach tea and Dragon Whelps Having completed her task, Vesp was sitting in the Goldshire inn. She couldn’t go home. Home was an irradiated, trog infested mess. While part of her brain was considering what to do next, her hands were busy by themselves. Seemingly at random, they began plucking objects from her pouches. A Dragonling Cropse. Engineering materials. Tools. While she considered her fate, her hands worked themselves, assembling the components into a dragonlike object. She looked down at what she was doing. Engineering. Maybe she couldn’t remember consciously, but her hands, her muscles remembered how to do it. But the creation was flawed, lifeless. She took a deep draught of peach tea, and considered the parts before her. Suddenly inspiration struck. She stoked the dragonling’s half rotten belly with some fel iron scraps, then breathed unholy power gently on it’s bony snout. With a start, the critter came to life. The Tea was helping her think. She couldn’t precisely engineer any more, but maybe, just maybe she could combine what she had become with what she used to be. Category:Death Knight Category:Articles by Rantinan category:Alliance category:Characters category:Gnome Category:DKOG